The HPIbet partnership with the Pari-Mutuel Urbain could also bring WMP trotting to French bettors.

by Melissa Keith

In early 2024, French trotters quietly expanded their presence on Canada’s only legal online wagering platform for horse racing. On Jan. 25, Woodbine Entertainment’s HPIbet offered its first full eight-race card from Hippodrome Paris-Vincennes, just ahead of the Prix d’Amérique (Jan. 28).

Chris Lush, chief technology, innovation and wagering officer for Woodbine Entertainment, told HRU about working out a deal with the Pari-Mutuel Urbain (PMU) for HPIbet customers. The PMU operates French online and off-track wagering on horse races, including select international racing. Lush said certain aspects of the French harness product required tailoring for the Canadian betting market.

“That [deal] honestly has been 10 years in the making,” Lush said. “It’s a different tote system in France, which is one of the biggest issues, and they have additional takeouts that we can’t configure on our side, to a certain extent. We have a 35 per cent max takeout in our Canadian legislation, and some of those pools are actually higher than 35 per cent, so there are certain pools we can’t take.”

The PMU is the third-largest entity of its kind internationally. France is a trotting-focused betting market, making for pool size seen at few North American harness tracks. French races on HPIbet share comingled pools with France, said Lush.

“We really wanted the opportunity to bet directly into the PMU pools, because there’s a lot of liquidity and interest in those pools,” he said.

He said HPIbet had offered limited French racing in the past, such as the thoroughbred Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, but the races were provided “through a third party, where we bet into them, and they bet into the Arc,” a set-up he called “a little convoluted, a little more difficult to operate.”

Making such occasional arrangements was not ideal.

“We basically did that because it was a big race, and it was hard for us to get into it,” Lush said. “We couldn’t make a good margin on it, because we were doing all these [international] jumps [to carry it].”

Tapping into the PMU could be a big move for Woodbine Mohawk Park, due to the unmatched popularity of harness racing in France.

“They prefer it more than thoroughbred,” said Lush. “They don’t bet on pacing either, like we do in Canada. Trotting is the big piece [whether under saddle (monté) or with sulkies (attelé)].

“We wanted to get in before the Prix d’Amérique, because that’s an opportunity for one of their big trotting races to be offered to our customers. I think a lot of our players know about French racing, and this is an opportunity to have more of that available. Honestly, our philosophy has always been to offer as much racing content to our customers as possible, so there’s almost nothing, in terms of top-tier racing, that we would turn down if we had the opportunity to offer it.”

Carrying French trotting on a regular basis with PMU-commingled pools is not a given for international markets. At the 2017 World Trotting Conference in Charlottetown, PEI, the racing manager for French trotting authority LeTrot expressed concerns about illicit export of the high-quality French racing signal into certain European markets which were not paying commission.

“We are selling more and more of our races abroad, and it’s always interesting to see in which conditions we can sell the races,” said Guillaume Maupas at the conference. “We know that we have a main interest, it’s to protect the organization and the industry of racing in each country, so we have to be sure… that when we’re broadcasting some pictures abroad, we receive a fee for sending those races.”

Woodbine’s chief technology, innovation and wagering officer confirmed that the PMU remained careful about foreign markets today.

“They are, and they’re really working with major pari-mutuel partners like ourselves [Woodbine], because when you have another pari-mutuel partner, we’re betting directly into their pools, which means that we can settle on each other and we know exactly what’s happening because we’re interfacing between our totes,” said Lush. “A lot of that [simulcast] signal that disappears, it’s fixed odds. So, what happens is someone gets access to that signal, provides it to essentially gray-market fixed-odds wagering sites, and then you have customers betting fixed odds on a signal that they shouldn’t have.”

Pari-mutuel protectionism keeps Japanese thoroughbred tracks successful from a business perspective. Lush said that France is similarly careful, if somewhat less restrictive, to protect its national racing industry.

“It’s similar to Japan, in that France — specifically PMU — will only open up to allow the French customers to bet on very select international races,” Lush said. “So, as part of the negotiations we had with them, we’re betting into their racing. They’re okay with us betting into their pools; they’re worried more about the French money leaving France… Some of the bet types they have, the Quinté Plus, they’re multi-million-dollar jackpots. When you have a Canadian [bettor] win one, you literally have millions of dollars flowing out of France and into Canada.”

He said this meant limiting the types of wagers available on French trotting via HPIbet. Negotiations also included the export of certain Woodbine Racetrack thoroughbred and Woodbine Mohawk Park trotting races to PMU customers. (The PMU does not accept pacing races for simulcast wagering).

“At this point, we have an agreement for them to bet on the [Grade I] Canadian International and the [Grade I] Woodbine Mile, so those two races will be included this year,” Lush said. “We’re working with them on potentially Mohawk Million Day or the Maple Leaf Trot, where we can actually build an all-trotting card… If we could move the [Mohawk] card to an afternoon card, there’s a possibility of doing that.”

The six-hour time difference is significant. Can the French harness market offset running Woodbine Mohawk Park head-to-head against major North American thoroughbred tracks? In 2014, Yonkers Raceway became the first American harness track to regularly export its signal to France, starting with five Sunday matinees in 2014, but this was discontinued in 2018.

“Honestly, the only challenge we have today is we run Mohawk at night,” said Lush. “Most of the Ontario tracks run at night, because we don’t want to interfere with thoroughbred tracks running across North America. If you look at an afternoon on the weekend, Gulfstream is taking the bulk of it, and then Santa Anita, and then a few other tracks, but Mohawk is one of the best tracks running at night, constantly doing two, two and a half, three million dollars on a Saturday night, so we’re in the right time slot. If we move it to the afternoon, we’d then be up against a lot of big competition.”

The Breeders Crown has attracted top-flight French trotters like 2019 Open Trot champion Bold Eagle to Mohawk in the past. With greater availability to the French market, 2025 Breeders Crown trotting events could benefit from PMU customers, said Lush.

“It’s coming back to Woodbine Mohawk Park next year, so hopefully there’s an opportunity for us to add that to the card for PMU to take, even though it’s at the wrong time [for French customers], and we need to bill it as a bigger trotting day, but I’m sure we’ll figure a way around that,” he said.

Woodbine successfully navigated the path to a transatlantic partnership in time for the 2024 Prix d’Amérique.

“The real challenge was, we had the [PMU] contract signed that week of [the Prix d’Amérique] and approval from the CPMA [Canadian Pari-Mutuel Agency] that week of, so we weren’t even 100 per cent sure we were going to be able to offer it by the weekend,” Lush said.

One thing is sure, HPIbet will continue to offer French trotting from various tracks for the immediate, indefinite, future.

“This is not a trial,” said Lush. “We have a three-year agreement with them, so I would expect for the next three years, we’ll be offering as much content as they can handle… This is something that I think we will continue to offer for years to come.”